Origin Story
by Gavin Gunhold
Summary: All Uusoae wanted to do was keep her younger siblings busy while her parents were away.
1. Prologue

_Unfortunately, this is kind of epic in my head and the rest of it hasn't been written yet._

*o*o*o*

Once upon a time, when even the Divine Realms are quite new, Uusoae's parents leave her in charge of her two younger siblings and tell her to keep them occupied "just for a while". And then Uusoae is alone with her belligerent younger brother Mithros, her expectant little sister Lou and a small pile of Stardust left in her parents wake.

"What do you want to do?" Uusoae asks them.

"Make a funny face," says Mithros.

And so Uusoae closes her eyes, concentrates very hard, and stretches her nose as far as it will go. Mithros and Lou laugh.

"Another!" Mithros demands.

And so Uusoae rolls her eyes up into her head and lets her jaw go boneless. It sinks down to her chest and she wiggles it.

Lou screams "Again, again!" and so Uusoae lets her nose flop, too and moves her ears to the top of her head and stretches them until they are long and thin. She twists her head back and forth and her facial features fly around and 'thwack' her in the face.

Mithros laughs and tells her: "You look stupid."

And Uusoae, because she is but a child herself, retorts: "Your face is stupid." But she shoves her own back to something like what it used to be.

Lou asks, "More!" But Uusoae says firmly, "No more. What should we do next?"

Mithros juts out his chin and says, "Make me something to play with."

And Lou adds hopefully, "Something pretty!"

Mithros rolls his eyes and says scornfully, "Something _Awesome_."

Uusoae thinks hard. She picks up the small pile of Stardust in both hands. Mithros and Lou gather around.

"What is that?" Lou asks, tugging at Uusoae's arm.

"It's Stardust, Lou. Don't make her spill it," Mithros says, pulling Lou away to get a better look. "What are you going to do with it?"

"Shh", says Uusoae.

"Yeah, be quiet, Lou."

Ignoring him, Uusoae steps back, arms outstretched and claps as much of the dust as she can loudly between her hands. As she pulls them away, there is _something_ left there.

"Pretty…," Lou breathes.

"Awesome," Mithros states, but his voice is a little breathless, too. "What should we name it?"

"Up to you," Uusoae says. She doesn't care as much about the naming of things.

"I'm going to call it the U-niverse, after you." Mithros claims.

"Aren't you funny," Uusoae says, but as Lou starts setting the new word into a silly chant, she can't help but feel a warm flood of affection for both of them.

They spend some time poking at the Universe, exploding a couple of the newly dubbed "stars" and flinging some "planets" in loops around others. Mithros gets fancy and loops moons around the planets and then does it again, seeing how many moons and planets he can keep spinning while they loop. Uusoae gets Lou to help knock them all off track to annoy Mithros. Just when Uusoae starts to wonder when Mother and Father will get back, though, Mithros decides he's bored. Uusoae takes a pinch of the remaining Stardust and blows it over one of the planets.

When the dust clears, there are creatures wandering around on four legs, with little heads and big bodies.

Mithros immediately sets out to make them fight each other. After the first one dies in a tragic pile of blood and broken limbs, Lou starts screaming at him. Mithros, who at first looked sorry for the loss, immediately pretends death is the best thing ever. Uusoae tires of their squabble quickly and freezes most of the planet. When it thaws there are new creatures and Mithros is entranced. He begins naming some of them.

Lou is still upset, though. Many of the new creatures scattered across the planet's surface have a tendency towards fuzziness. Uusoae thinks _smaller_, picks up more Stardust and claps. In her hands is a fuzzy black creature with shiny violet eyes. It lets out a pitiful mew and Uusoae hands it off to Lou.

Lou is nothing if not stubborn in her unhappiness, but the sheer cuteness of the creature is obviously making an impression. "What if Mithros kills it?" she confides her last remaining fear.

"That's alright." Uusoae says. "I gave it nine lives."

Lou beams and immediately begins rubbing her hands wonderingly through its fur. It's a Uusoae creation, though, so it gets sick of this quickly and runs off. "I'm going to call it Cat!" she says. "Here, Cat! Kitty, kitty!" she makes grabby hands and runs after.

"That's a stupid-," Mithros stops when Uusoae kicks him. She glares down at him until he admits: "It's okay, I guess."

Uusoae smiles and gets Mithros to show her what he's named – he has a system, of course. "What we should have next are creatures that look like us."

"Yes!" says Lou, who has the Cat tucked in her arm. "And then Uusoae can be the Mommy…."

"I don't want to be the Mommy," protests Uusoae.

"I can be the Mommy," Lou says blithely, "and Mithros can be the Daddy…."

"Only if I get cool powers like Dad has," Mithros says.

"You don't have to be a Mother and Father," Uusoae says.

"What else would we be?" Lou wants to know. Mithros also looks interested.

"You could be a Sister," says Uusoae. She holds back a sigh at Lou's puzzled expression and Mithros' obvious eye-rolling. "Or a Brother," she allows, "or a totally unrelated person." She can't seem to think of what they might be and it makes her annoyed.

"Not related, how?" Mithros wants to know.

"I want to be the Mommy," Lou's in complete agreement.

"Fine," Uusoae gives in, and makes them some people.

Mithros and Lou are very amused by their people and so Uusoae tunes them out and makes some things just for herself. She tries out bits on her own body to see how they'll turn out, combining old and new things. Her favourite part is making variations on all her creations, each more interesting than the last. Her most ridiculous so far is the one Mithros named Platypus.

When she deigns to check back in with Mithros' and Lou's people, she discovers that Mithros has made them into his minions. She distracts him by asking him what Lou's doing and then gives them all back their free will.

"Lou gave them fire," Mithros tattles. "Hey what did you—"

"You did what?" Uusoae asks Lou.

"I gave them a Gift, like you gave me!" Lou says. "They were cold and I showed them how to keep warm, but with pretty colours." She opens her eyes wide. "Cat said it was a good idea."

Uusoae looks at the Cat suspiciously and it looks shiftily to the side.

"I also told them I was their Goddess, and this was Cat," Lou declares seriously.

Uusoae turns to Mithros, eyebrow raised.

"Her name is stupid," Mithros explains. "She can't tell her people to pray to Lou. They'll laugh."

"I assume you didn't tell yours to call you the God," Uusoae glares.

"Of course not," Mithros snorts. "If Lou got to give hers fire, I'm going to give mine the wheel."

"Do I want to know what a wheel is?" Uusoae wonders.

"It's round!" Mithros enthuses. "You'll love it!"

"Wheel, wheel, meal, peel," Lou sing-songs.

Uusoae thinks that she should give her creations a gift too – but she likes the ones she's made already. She tries a couple more new variations instead – a horse with a horn, a lion with a bird's head – and gives them something like the fire Lou gave to her people, only with less silly colours.

And then she stumbles upon her people. She wasn't even aware she had any, but there they are. They call her Chaos or sometimes Entropy and they laugh when she shakes the Earth to keep from shaking Mithros and dance in the rain of her landscape-changing thunderstorms and rest under her tall shade trees, and they take great joy in all the details she's made and the change she wreaks. They make friends with her Platypus. They don't build shrines and leave gifts for her like Mithros' and Lou's people, but they do hold wild parties in her honour. She knows they love her, and she admits she likes them rather a lot.

So entranced is she that she only barely notices Lou's frantic attempts to get her attention. Mithros' people have become a problem. On her way to stop the advancing armies from slaughtering Lou's people she spares a short second to admire the ingeniousness of Mithros' wheel. She deflects most of the appallingly exciting battle energy with a well timed natural disaster and then takes Mithros over her knee. Lou sobs into Cat's fur in the corner.

"Make your people get along with Lou's people." Uusoae demands. "Now."

"Fine," Mithros grits out, both humiliated and furious.

Uusoae already regrets leaving him unsupervised to go comfort Lou.

"He was going to _kill_ them," Lou wails.

Uusoae pats her on the back and waits Lou out. Cat looks a little damp and much less patient in her arms. Eventually Uusoae decides Lou will be okay and checks on Mithros.

The horrible little dung-heap.

Sure he did what she told him to and remade the social structure so his people and Lou's can live peaceably, but now he has his army reassembled and pointed at _her_ people. They've already seen at least a few day of battle, and her people are inventive but outnumbered.

Uusoae forms a room like the ones Mithros' people make on the Earth and seals Mithros in.

"Let me out!" he cries. "I hate you!"

She ignores him. Her people appeal to her for help, and she appears before them.

"Hello," she says. "I'm Uusoae."

Her people stare at her.

"No?" Uusoae asks uncomfortably. She tries again: "Chaos?"

A couple of them drop to their knees, mouths open. Uusoae remembers that ever since she tried out all the new creations on herself, she hasn't really stopped changing all over without even thinking about it. When she looks down she sees scales splintering into fur and claws melting into hooves and is ashamed. Why did she show up in person when she could have just sent a signal or a message or…

There's a faint touch at her tail and she whips it out of the way, surprised. One of her people jumps away from her and runs to an adult - now she's scaring children.

"I'm sorr—," Uusoae cuts off her apology when the child turns around and she can see the ridiculously cheeky grin on his face.

The adult looks maybe as though she is trying not to laugh. "You're our Goddess?" she asks.

"I'm Uusoae. Yes," Uusoae says firmly. She is fairly sure that if people can take Mithros and Lou seriously, she can manage too. "You asked for help."

"And you came," the woman says.

"You're my people," Uusoae says, defensively. "You liked my Platypus."

"We do," the woman smiles and several of the children squish their lips together with their hands. The little boy that touched her tail makes poison-spur hands and shocks another little boy with them. The second boy keels over and a little girl shrieks and starts tickling him. It's not exactly the adulation Lou or Mithros receives from their devotees (or not the way they tell it) but at least no one is on their knees anymore.

"What would you have me do?" Uusoae asks. "I can't destroy Mithros' army," she amends, thinking of Lou's people dotting their ranks.

"No," the woman agrees, pensive, "but I had a dream last night that you would come to us..."

A _dream_. Uusoae cocks her feathered head to the side, interested. She is aware that the minds of mortals drift in subconscious thought as they rest, but that is admittedly as far as her knowledge of dreaming extends.

"…and in this dream, you fashioned for us strange birds that flew on wings made of the swords of the Mithran army, and our enemies were filled with fear at the sight of the birds, who feasted upon the dead."

"Sure," Uusoae says. "Let's try that."

Now that she has a solution - one where she gets to make a new creation, no less - she is all business. She reaches out to where the Mithrans are camped and replaces swords, knives, daggers with stone in similar weight, so the deception may be found later rather than sooner. The amassed weaponry clatters in a pile before her feet. Her people step back prudently. One points and whispers "Doesn't that one belong to their High Commander?"

Uusoae stares and scowls. She can tell that her imagination and a pinch of stardust are not going to cut it here in this Universe she's made. She must follow its rules, to a certain extent, while she is inside it. Creating new life, grown at least enough to be flight-ready, is going to be a problem. She could always go home and fix it from there, but for one, Lou and Mithros are there, and secondly, Uusoae finds she does not want to give up just yet.

She shapes the bird. It starts in her mind, the cruel talons, the vicious pointed teeth in the wild-eyed human head, the lethal plumage. As she takes the shapes on herself the Mithran swords and knives leap to fit themselves to her flesh, rattling and clanging with the clash of battle. She settles her new body and eyes her wings speculatively. She hops and shakes them, catches the breeze, catches the wind of her power. Dust of a star under the light of a moon.

Uusoae shoots off into the night, so exhilarated by the thrill of flight that when she reaches her destination - the battlefield - it is near painful to stop. She circles, thinking. She knows she should find what she is about to do distasteful. Lou would scream at her. Mithros would be angry. And for all that they are Lou and Mithros' people, she made them in the first place. They're hers too. She puts it aside and lands. Tears into the nearest fallen soldier, teaches her body what it was meant for. She spills entrails, pulls an eye from its socket, chews on a heart. Blood runs from her chin, spatters and drips down her bare chest, stains into her feathers. The Mithran army spot her and shoot at her, their spindly arrows useless against her armor. She bats them away scornfully, shrieks and dives at them. They run, the fear pouring off them in hazy waves, and she laughs, euphoric, feasting, the pain of hunger receding. How devastating it was to be hungry.

Eventually she gets bored and flies back. Lands. Now that she knows what she is looking for, she can see that her people, gathered around her, are very much afraid. She bares her teeth, and thinks it good that she has eaten her fill. She becomes a snake and molts, slithering out from the bird-skin's mouth.

Her state of flux begins anew, giving her a snout, paws, antlers. The skin smells like death and waste, and Uusoae licks her lips, unnerved when they taste clean.

"Are you our bird?" asks the boy who imitated her Platypus, awed.

"No," she rasps shortly. "I was only the first. If you want more, you have them," and she jerks her head at the heap of metal.

"The swords?" asks the dreamer. "What are we to do with them?"

Uusoae is suddenly angry at herself. "You pluck one," she brays, "and then you stab yourself with it."

Her people are astounded. "... And then?" they ask.

"And then," Uusoae screeches, "from you, the bird of your nightmares is born."

"We are to be the birds?" says a man. "That's a terrible plan!" A number of people around him nod in agreement.

"Our Goddess has given us a gift," the dreamer warns. "We must thank her."

"More like a curse," the same man mutters.

"This is how we save our people," she says, and hefts a sword that served as a flight feather.

Uusoae watches the woman impale herself and shift, wondering if if the shifting always looks so painful from the outside. She leaves abruptly, sucking herself back to where she can feel Mithros and Lou waiting.

Mother and Father are there as well, Uusoae notes with a sinking feeling. As are a number of curious looking newcomers, all shaped in the same way as Mother and Father - all adult, as she has learned from her people. Lou looks worried, Mithros looks both angry and smug. Both look small.

"Here at last, I see," says Father, harassed.

"What have you done to yourself!" moans Mother, and Uusoae casts her eyes down the pulp of her jellied body to her rabbit clawed feet, ashamed of its strangeness.

"I thought we told you to take care of your brother and sister. What part of that meant that you should take stardust – forbidden, by the way – make up a new dimension and leave your brother imprisoned while you go off and play?" Father demands.

"It wasn't like that," Uusoae protests feebly.

"And what was it like?" They stare her down, matched expressions of expectant righteousness. Uusoae thinks of exasperation at her siblings and her irritation at her parents for leaving her with them, of a fierce joy in creation, of an all-consuming hunger, of self-loathing for something she can barely explain to herself. She doesn't have the words.

"Hmmm," says Mother.

"Indeed," says Father.

They turn to include the others.

"This was meant to be such a happy celebration – a gathering of family," says Mother, sighing.

"Children," announces Father. "Meet your new brothers and sisters."

They've gathered across from each other in two lines, Uusoae joining Mithros, Lou and Cat to eye the others in solidarity.

"This is Uusoae, our firstborn, fond of the dramatic entrance," Mother rolls her eyes. Uusoae seethes at the unfairness. "And Mithros, the one stuck in the box and Lou over there with the four-legged creature."

Mithros and Lou manage to pull themselves together enough to give haughty disdainful looks.

"My name is Patriciannabellelouise, and this is Cat." Lou rolls it serenely off her tongue using her Goddess-voice. "We extend warm greetings to our new siblings and hope that we may in time call them friends."

"The bond of blood is a sacred trust, and we shall honour it," Mithros proclaims.

Mother and Father exchange faintly amused glances. Some of the new siblings look amused as well. Uusoae loathes that they should share anything, especially laughter at Lou and Mithros' expense.

"I greet you, my brother, my sisters," a woman with brown hair and milky white eyes inclines her head, far surpassing Lou's attempt at Queenliness. "I am called Shakith." Her tone brooks no argument.

"I guess we're going in order, then?" the next one notes to himself. "I'm Mynoss, second son. I am glad to meet big brother at last." Mithros raises his chin, wary.

"Lavinia," the short woman states. "Pleased to make your acquaintance," she bows, mocking all the lordly delivery.

The tall woman next to her smiles pleasantly, blonde hair in a long braid over her shoulder. "I am Susan. Well met."

The short bald one says "Kyprioth" impatiently, makes a complicated wave with his hand and says, "Is there a reason why those two are so small?"

Uusoae thinks "Is there a reason why you're so _rude_?" but doesn't say it aloud because she's in enough trouble as is. Lou and Mithros exchange glances.

"Oh!" says Father. "Why are you both still masquerading as children? Grow up at once!"

And they do, looking rather alarmed as their bodies stretch into their new shapes. Cat yowls and struggles against Lou's hold.

"Much better," says Mother. "Good. Now, we were going to..."

The thin reedy man with the long black hair on the other side of Kyprioth gasps sharply and holds his side, turning his wounded gaze on his brother's bald head.

"Nearly forgot Gainel," Kyprioth says, looking bored and not really all that innocent.

Mother sighs. "Please pay attention, Gainel."

"Apologies," Gainel says, voice rusty with disuse. "I am Gainel." He stares at Uusoae, openly curious. She glares back.

Mother is speaking again. "...and to celebrate our reunion, a feast!"

"Except for Uusoae," Father says sternly.

A box, identical to the one Uusoae made for Mithros appears around her.

"You can stay in there until we feel better about you," Mother's voice filters through the walls.

Uusoae gasps in frustration, and sulks in the corner, a multitude of insect eyes wide on her head. She thinks darkly that she doesn't want to go to any horrible feast with her horrible new siblings, especially since she's _already eaten._ So _good! Perfect!_

*o*o*o*


	2. Puzzle, Escape

_Happy Birthday, Imo!_

*o*o*o*

Once she gets past the resentment and rage, the worst part is the boredom. Uusoae can't get out - she's tried just about every way she can think of and then a few more. She gets as big as she can, but the room doesn't budge. She gets as small as she can, but there aren't any holes to crawl through. She rakes claws over the walls, kicks at them, vibrates them with sounds to weaken them, disintegrates and tries to pass through them (or pass them through her) and, in a fit of pique, stabs at them with poison spurs. Nothing works, but at least it gives her something to do. She still has a little pinch of stardust left, which she carries with her like hope. Maybe Uusoae could clap it into a weapon that would break the walls down, but for now she's saving it; she doesn't want to use it unless she knows it will work. Surely her parents will let her out before then, anyways.

Although... she's tried that, once, too. In a bad moment, big tears rolling down her face, she remembers what she was like when she was new - fits herself into her limbs and her face and holds on tight. Only when she opens her tightly screwed eyes, she can tell she's not right. Her skin is scaly blue and it's not... She screams and dissolves into black feathers. Uusoae can't believe she doesn't remember how she started out.

"Mother! Father! Please! I'll never do it again," she sobs, apologizing without knowing why. "Just please let me out."

But if they can hear her they don't reply. She stops speaking after that.

When she's not figuring out new ways to get out, she thinks about all the things she knows. Holds onto the names of her new siblings, thinks of things she'll create when she's free again, imagines there's gravity like on the world she created and flips it so she's standing on the ceiling or the wall instead. Seeing as how she can just shift into something that will hang from the wall or the ceiling, it's not incredibly satisfying.

She gets the occasional short visit from Lou and the others to break up the monotony. (Mithros comes once, to apologize, but Uusoae is already not speaking so he goes off in a huff. Susan and Shakith come to be polite, Kyprioth and Lavinia come to goad her, and she's never really sure about Mynoss' motives. She thinks maybe he wants information. Gainel... is different.) She pretends that they are talking to her through her floor or down through her ceiling when they think they are against her wall.

Lou tells her about her people mostly. How they're getting on, who's in love with who, how much they worship and adore her. She also tells her about the exploits of Cat. It's tedious and Uusoae loathes it. Can't stand hearing it, can't help listening for more. She also tells her about what their siblings are up to.

In the beginning, Uusoae would ask about her people and Lou would answer that they were fine in quick clipped tones. She wouldn't say another word about them, though, and eventually it's just another thing that Uusoae gives up on knowing.

And then there's Gainel.

Gainel comes and talks and his voice echos from all sides and surrounds her so she feels like it's muffling her, or that she's running into it, depending on her shape. He doesn't seem to mind that she never talks back.

He speaks to her in poetry, in snatches of words that he has heard, maybe that he has put together himself. He tells her about _dreams_.

Oh yes, Lou mentioned this. After Uusoae was put away, Mother and Father divided up all the responsibility of caring for the people on the world she created. Mithros and Lou got to keep the people they already had, and were given war and love respectively. Shakith took justice, Mynoss took trade and they both set up to the East. Lavinia took art and went South ("She's made herself look like an old hag, can you imagine?" Lou crows), Susan opened a hole into a parallel Universe and takes souls through to the other side and Kyprioth took crime and goes wherever he isn't wanted. Uusoae doesn't ask if she has anyone or anything for herself, and Lou never says.

And Gainel was given the realm of sleep. Gainel's story is all the stories. Over and over again, endless magnificent variations.

She breaks her long silence to ask him for the story of how she escapes.

He tells her she hasn't written it yet.

"Can't you just go snatch it out of time?" Uusoae begs.

"Can't you?" Gainel wonders and Uusoae tries to no avail. She howls at Gainel like he's both pack and the moon. "Maybe it's possible in the Universe, but I don't think it works like that here," he says, gentle

"I could make it work like that here," Uusoae says darkly, thinking of her stardust.

"And where would we be then?" Gainel replies profoundly, as though it were both question and statement.

Uusoae sighs, irritated. "But I will get out?" she asks.

"You will," Gainel says, and Uusoae isn't sure if he knows it or is just trying to make her feel better.

Against her will, she does feel a little better.

She starts thinking of the things she's already tried and wonders where to go from there. Changing her shape hadn't done anything. Trying to change the room hadn't either. Maybe the space inside the room? But no, it won't budge when she tries to move it elsewhere. What about the temperature? If a star gets cold maybe it will die, or explode if it's hot. Stardust might work the same.

Uusoae changes to a dragon. She thinks it might be able to withstand the cold, but she would have to be asleep. Who knew what would happen to her if she got trapped inside a dead star?

She paces and breathes fire at the walls instead. They catch nicely, licking up and out, a fantastic shade of greenish white. The blistering heat is too much for her eventually, even as a dragon, and she shifts to a phoenix. Her feathers go up almost immediately, and she has time for a final painful, "Maybe this wasn't such a good..." before she's gone.

.

.

_A blur of... turns towards it, but..._

_._

._  
_

_noise..._

.

.

_too loud, want..._

.

.

_a terrible blear, and then too much..._

.

.

_What happened?_

.

.

_panic, flail! but nothing will move..._

.

.

_noise starts again, painful and shrill. goes away when it's too weak to keep it up. _

.

.

_wait... that was. The noise is her?_

.

.

_What happened?_

.

.

_Colour. Light. Open your eyes!_

.

.

She forces her eyes open and looks around. Really looks. It takes some time, remembering who she is and words for things and how to distinguish one thing from the next. She blinks dazedly all the while.

Takes in the scorch marks and the stain from where her ashes were, and remembers how she tried to explode the walls apart, or at least burn a hole right through them.

The evidence points to it not going so well.

Then Uusoae looks down and realizes that she feels so strange because she came back as a baby. Juvenile eyes, juvenile brain. Tiny, weak limbs. How embarrassing. She doesn't think she was ever a baby before. Not like that, all helpless and pathetic.

She regrows herself, and that is painful too. Much more painful than changing shape otherwise, which would be interesting if she _weren't in so much pain_.

Uusoae loses her bones, oozing into a jellied sea creature and tries to think what she can possibly try next.

Maybe it's because she'd rather not move again, ever, that she decides to try finding a way out in her mind. She imagines all the walls collapsing around her opens an eye to see if it's had any affect (it hasn't). She keeps going, too exhausted to stop or to think of something different. She imagines someone opening the box, cutting through it. She builds a world inside of it. Eventually she even stops checking to see if it's working.

Uusoae's in the middle of a hedge maze, staring up at a sky of argyle-patterned moons and twinkling fish when Cat shows up. She offers him a bristly appendage and he rubs up against it after a delicate sniff.

"Did I imagine you here, too?" Uusoae asks.

"Hardly," Cat snorts. "I only go where I please."

"Oh?" Uusoae says. "Then I suppose you know the way out."

"Of course," Cat says and adds casually, "I can show you if you like."

Hope, long forgotten, wells up in Uusoae's chest. But then Cat says, "You can't go like that," and the hope rises up and sticks like a boulder in her gizzard instead.

"What do I do?" Uusoae pleads. "I'll do anything."

"No need for theatrics, you just have to dress the part," Cat sits and unconcernedly licks his paw.

"You mean..." she starts and peers around at her scales, some leathery, some more feathery.

Cat pauses in his grooming, his tail twitching rhythmically behind him.

She shifts then, remembering how it was to shape Cat. When she settles, he stalks around her critically. She licks her paw at him, mocking. It is exceptionally difficult not to bat at his tail as it goes by, but she stubbornly restrains herself.

"I suppose you'll do," Cat says grudgingly.

"I should think so," Uusoae reproves. Only Cat has already taken off, and she has to scramble to catch up to him.

They slink between the hedges and cavort across fields, pouncing on field-moose (watch out for the antlers!) and chasing pocket-watches. Schools of fish follow them in the sky and Uusoae and Cat sit for a while, tracking them with narrowed slits of eyes, hoping they'd swim low enough to catch. They vault up and over walls, and run until eventually they are at _the _wall. Cat rubs all along it, purring at it shamelessly like it's a long lost friend.

"Really," she scoffs.

He glances back at her, smugly, and then goes right through.

Fine, Uusoae thinks, refusing to be impressed. She follows his steps, rubbing up against the wall - it is excellent to scratch against, she'll admit, prickly but cool at once. Delicious.

Maybe she purrs a little. What of it?

And then she slips through, too.

She blinks

And sneezes, nose wrinkling at the soot and ash.

Cat has led her back to her room..

She glares at him.

But, "Oh. You got in _here_, too."

Cat doesn't even deign to reply. The _obviously_ is implicit.

"Then..."

"Are you coming, or what?"

And they leave.

It's part of Cat's story, Gainel tells her later (Cat would have her believe that it's simply because he is Cat, and therefore superior in all ways). Uusoae may have created him and given him nine lives, but it was people who believed in Cat's ability to get anywhere that made it part of his mythos. They also gave him an insatiable curiosity, but that's a tale for another time.

*o*o*o*


End file.
